DSTRTD SGNL Interview

Hi DSTRTD SGNL, thank you for the interview!

Thanks for having me/us :) Always fun spreading some words about our music.

What would be your early inspirations and what did you listen to while growing up?

My personal inspiration in music and further on in producing music was the early Frankfurt ”Techno” sound with labels such as Westside, Techno Drome International, ”later” on New Beat, Acid, lots of House Music, EBM and early Techno stuff from R&S, Warp... Parallel to this of course the 80s sound of artists like Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, New Order, Yello.

What made you become a musician and why techno?

The music itself was always a magic thing to me. Driving beats, atmospheres, the almost infinite pool of sounds. From the beginning I was interrested in how this music is made, so it was just a matter of time before the first own exeperiments in making music took place. Actually we started no later then 1991/1992... Due to my own label work, Djing, and all the parties and concerts I/we started to organise, making music slowly recieved less and less time in my personal schedules and slowly disappeared. In the end of 2022 I teamed up with Stephan Kessler and within no time we formed/became DSTRTD SGNL. The sound is not necessaryly Techno but for both of us it will always be electronic ”dance” music in whatever style/form. From the beginning we decided to produce what we like with no boundaries.

 

 

Where do you get inspiration for your songs?
We both listen to a lot of music from many different genres but I think i can speak for both of us that electronic music still has the most magic of all music ”styles”. We have many different ways of aproaching a new song, sometimes it's just a groove, a melody, sometimes a sample or a vocal on which we get an idea/inspiration to construct a song around.

Are you digital artist or do you still use analog gear too?

We have set up a complete digital studio and we only use 100% digital equipment, so no hardware in our studio.

Techno as a genre has evolved much more than any other genre. Has it lost some of its authenticity over the years? There is still good Detroit techno coming out luckily.

The good thing in Techno is that Techno has no boundaries. For me personal Techno is the perfect platform to do whatever you like with technology. There is so many different ”styles” in techno and especially crossing these genres is what makes it so entertaining. I really like melodic techno stuff, also house influenced tunes, older detroit Techno was awesome, but minimalistic stuff can also be damn cool, even Hardstlye, Rave or Gabber/Rotterdam stuff had/has their moments.

 

 

The scene in Germany also has evolved and grown a lot. How and why did Germany and especially Berlin become the hotspot of techno and other electronic music too?

For us Frankfurt has always been the hotspot, not Berlin too much to be honest, which of course is owed by the fact that Stephan and I are based in the Offenbach/Frankfurt/Darmstadt (so called Rhein/Main) area where we witnessed the rise of electronic music from the almost very beginning. These days Berlin has become quite important especially due to their amazing club- and DJ scene. Germany did produce a load of talented musicians and producers in the field of electronic music, maybe because we're somehow a pretty cold and industrial country.

I think it was Armin Van Buuren who said people are making trance and calling it melodic techno today because trance is a bit of a bad word.

Well, I think he is correct in this, even if I think that the name is not really too important. A good song/track is good despite any music genre name it has. Sometimes people just need these scenes for their feelings so yeah, well, call it Trance, call it meldoic Techno if it's good, it's good. 

 

 

As an artist what would be your ultimate goal?

Continue to be able to produce whatever music we like and present it to the people. Something we already achieved, so no ultimate goals here :)

What are you future plans?
Well, quite a lot. We already have a massive release and production schedule with new tunes on different labels all over the planet. Italy, Netherlands, Germany, France, some cool stuff in the pipeline.

Check DSTRTD SGNL Out!

 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/artist/4ISX2aRyZ10uoLtypdPNai?si=ulzS9sDyTN-sRtldKEV4BA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DSTRTDSIGNAL

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dstrtd_sgnl/